Publications and Book Reviews

Lobster Issue 6 (1984)

[…] book, like all the others, does not explain the Reagan phenomenon. RR Deadly Deceits Ralph McGeehee (Sheridan Square Publications Inc. USA 1983) Ralph McGeehee was a CIA agent for 25 years operating mainly in South East Asia. He is now a bitter opponent of his old firm and the anger comes through clearly in […]

Blinded by the light: Puppet Masters: the Political Use of Terrorism in Italy

Lobster Issue 23 (1992)

Puppet Masters: the Political Use of Terrorism in Italy Phillip Willan Phillip Willan’s Puppet Masters: the Political Use of Terrorism in Italy, (Constable, London, 1991) is a detailed and interesting book, dealing in a thorough (if partially flawed) way with a fascinating subject. It covers a wide array of interlocking subjects including the infamous P2 … Read more

The two Indonesias and the two Americas

Lobster Issue 35 (Summer 1998)

[…] battalion was at the center of massacre and torture operations in the 1960s as in the 1990s. Its chief then, Sarwo Edhie, has been called a CIA agent or contact. It was he who, while giving orders in Indonesia for the elimination of the Indonesian Communist Party, used the American Army word, ‘psywar.’ ‘The […]

The Father of Spin: Edward L. Bernays and the Birth of Public Relations

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Lobster Issue 44 (Winter 2002/3)

Larry Tye New York: Owl Books, 2002, pb $16.00 ISBN 0 8050 6789 2   If Edward Bernays hadn’t existed, Edward Bernays would have invented him. And in fact this is more or less what happened. This is the long-awaited paperback edition of the first full-length biography of Bernays, who, like President Harry Truman, added … Read more

Books and Pamphlets

Lobster Issue 13 (1987)

Counter-insurgency in Rhodesia J. K. Villiers (Croom Helm, London, 1985) An expanded Masters thesis, full of descriptions of psychological operations by the Rhodesian forces (which failed utterly: and no wonder, they were useless), and rather less about pseudo-gang activities which, like their equivalents in the British operations in Kenya, were a success – i.e. they … Read more

George Orwell and the IRD

Lobster Issue 38 (Winter 1999)

In their recent history of the Information Research Department (IRD), Paul Lashmar and James Oliver discuss George Orwell’s decision to collaborate with that organisation’s anti-Communist propaganda operations. They write that ‘George Orwell’s reputation as a left-wing icon took a body blow from which it may never recover when it was revealed in 1996 that he … Read more

Here, there and everywhere

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Lobster Issue 56 (Winter 2008/9)

[…] of this book there are many raves; but continue on down through the second page and you come to a very destructive review by a former FBI agent, Delbert Hahn, who was interviewed by Hopsicker. Before buying this read that. Notes If the Zelig reference escapes you try On getaway styles, I prefer the […]

Terrorism: how the West can win

Lobster Issue 13 (1987)

[…] including Kirkpatrick, Schultz, Meese and Webster of the FBI. The major themes here are: The Soviet Union is behind world terrorism; the PLO is a major Soviet agent in funding and encouraging world terrorism. The minor theme is, of course, that the Soviet Union was behind the attempted assassination of the Pope. But covertly […]

A (very) brief history of Christian politics in the United States

Lobster Issue 51 (Summer 2006)

In its own communications, evangelical Christianity exists in a delirious present but it has a rich and recoverable history. Evangelical religion can and should be explained in part in terms of the response of the millions of the faithful to the experience of modernity. But while secular intellectuals sometimes see it simply as a mechanism … Read more

Everything is going to change

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Lobster Issue 56 (Winter 2008/9)

[…] a car whose registration was closed off by the FBI, was arrested by Chicago police who had strong intelligence connections. After Kennedy’s trip was cancelled, U.S. Treasury agent Abraham Bolden, who questioned the parallels with the situation in Dallas, was persecuted and eventually jailed. Meanwhile, two snipers had been arrested, and three more sought, […]

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